Laughter and humour in Middle English texts

Humour is notoriously difficult to define or to translate, whether from one language to another, or from one culture to another. A warm smile at a monk’s doodle about his cat; a wry chuckle at Piers Plowman’s satirical sketch of Mede’s cavalcade where Mede, Favel (Flattery), and False mount the backs of church and civil court officials as their steeds; and a giggle at Alisoun’s vulgar “Tehee” in Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale are some of the responses a modern person might make to what we perceive as humour in Middle English poetry. A useful methodology for discerning the complexity of humour in the literature of the English Middle Ages is to study texts in which a medieval audience can be seen to appreciate humour. Both Boccacio and Chaucer employ the device of a frame story within which a number of narrators tell tales to each other. The audience’s reaction is recorded as part of the frame narrative; their appreciation of the humour, demonstrated in laughter or animated discussion, gives the modern reader many pointers as to what a medieval audience found amusing. Frequently, though not invariably, the medieval appreciation of humour corresponds with that of twenty-first-century readers.